We will be having Trunk-or-Treat on Saturday, October 31, beginning at 5:30 p.m. in our parking lot!

https://www.prospectstreetumc.com/2020/10/2803/

Clarity

For our appeal does not spring from deceit or impure motives or trickery, but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the message of the gospel, even so we speak, not to please mortals, but to please God who tests our hearts.    [1 Thessalonians 2:3-4]

“People-pleasing” is a term that I suspect many of us have heard and have also felt can apply to us. I know that the desire to have people like me can be quite strong. Avoiding conflict so that people will like me and think wonderful things about me is a particular behavior that can also stem from this impulse. One does not have to think too deeply to see the potential dangers that lie along this path. We can avoid many dangers, when, as St. Paul describes above, we are set on pleasing God, rather than people.

The desire to please others, rather than or before God, can lead us into these dangers that are also listed by the apostle: deceit, impure motives, trickery. Many people who fall into these patterns do not always set out on that path intentionally. It sometimes boils down to looking at a particular goal – popularity, large crowds, helping others, “success” – and subtly compromising our heart-being-right-with-God to achieve the goal. Before we know it, we have become willing to manipulate others, twist the truth a little bit, tell “white lies” for a “good purpose.” The phrase “the ends justify the means” comes to mind.

In the Christian life, however, the ends never justify the means. The Christian life is primarily about the means – what we do and say overflowing from a heart set on pleasing God. One of the pastors and authors who has spoken most clearly about the Christian life being primarily about “the means” is the late Eugene Peterson. In his book, “Under the Unpredictable Plant,” he writes: “I saw that it was possible to be a pastor and not manipulate people in the name of God, possible to be a pastor and not take charge of a religious business. There was a way of being a pastor that took people with supreme seriousness in the place they were, respecting all the contingencies of that time and place. And there was a way of being a pastor that let God’s word be the shaping, saving, determining word that I could simply proclaim and trust rather than use.”

While Peterson’s words speak particularly about the pastoral ministry, they are applicable to all of us who seek to follow Jesus:
not manipulating people in the name of God;
not seeing the church as a religious business;
taking others seriously;
letting God’s word shape, save, and determine rather than being wielded and used.

May we, then, reject the lie that the ends justify the means.
May we seek above all, to please God who tests our hearts.
And so may we surrender ourselves – heart, soul, mind, and strength – to the One who loves us enough to redeem us, sanctify us, and give us a heart capable of such lives.

Pastor Ty

Would you like to enroll in E-Tithing?  E-Tithing is an automatic withdrawal from your checking account and is remitted automatically to the church.   We can set it up so it will deduct from your checking account on the 1^st and/or the 15^th of each month.  Contact the church office for more information!

The Volunteers in Mission Team will be taking orders beginning Sunday, October 25 through November 1.  The cost of the subs will be $4.00 each.   Call the church office to place your order. Thanks!

Salvation Army Food Pantry collection will be Sunday,  October 25
Suggested donations: Breakfast Cereal

Put your donations in the cart in the back of the sanctuary.